Will Wall Street Woes Affect The RR Industry?

[Anonymous]

It seems to me that a lot of people were handsomely rewarded despite their mismanagement of Freddie and Fannie, and that mismanagement has resulted in adding 5 trillion dollars to our national debt.  If an investigation were ever called for, it would be with this.  Doesn't anybody think it is conspicuously inconsistent how the news media is treating this debacle compared to how they treated Enron?  I wonder what could account for the difference.

[henry6]

I did not intend my comments regarding the underlying cause of the credit crunch to turn into a political commentary.  It is an economic issue.  Since they have produced a flurry of political commentary, I changed the posting to remove any reference to politics.

 

This is a topic rife with politics and emotions...and a pinch of reality(?)!

[Los Angeles Rams Guy]

No wonder they call economics the "dismal" science.

[Modelcar]

....We're reaping the fruits of deregulation...!

And it's effecting much of America.

[wjstix]

As far as the original post/question, it may depend on what happens next. In 1987 the stock market had one of the greatest crashes in it's history, yet recovered fairly quickly and there was very little affect on the economy. It's often forgotten that even though it's always cited as the start of "The Great Depression, the stock market crash of Oct. 1929 really only caused a serious recession, with 8-10% unemployment. It wasn't until 1931, when the fallout from the stock market crash helped cause an international banking crisis that the economy really went bad, with unemployment rising to 25%.